Physical Science International Journal

Joint torque control of a robotic manipulator requires a close dynamic description model involving the non negligible dynamics of the subsystems making up the system. The mathematical model for joint torque control of the robotic manipulator has been identified as one of the major sources of failures of commercial robots. The manipulator is basically made up of links connected by joints, and the torque that moves the links connected to a joint is produced by the joint actuator and also in practice, the control law is fed into the actuator inputs, therefore the actuator dynamics becomes non negligible dynamics in the dynamic modeling of the manipulator for robust joint torque control. Hence, a complete dynamic model of the manipulator which involves the link dynamics plus actuator dynamics was proposed. This paper focuses on the modeling of a 3DOF articulated manipulator based on independent joint (decentralized) scheme and the determination of the viscous damping coefficient for the joint torque control model. The independent joint model provides closer mathematical description of the manipulator and also enhances robust controller design. Joint damping coefficient B, was determined through experiment based on bode plot of the open loop gain. From the results, it was concluded that joints I and II achieved the best performance when B is 0.001N.m/rad /sec and 0.01N.m/rad /sec respectively.